Rail road cars in North America commonly employ double axle swivelling trucks known as “three piece trucks” to permit them to roll along a set of rails. The three piece terminology refers to a truck bolster and pair of first and second sideframes. In a three piece truck, the truck bolster extends cross-wise relative to the sideframes, with the ends of the truck bolster protruding through the sideframe windows. Forces are transmitted between the truck bolster and the sideframes by spring groups mounted in spring seats in the sideframes.
One general purpose of a resilient suspension system may tend to be to reduce force transmission to the car body, and hence to the lading. This may apply to very stiff suspension systems, as suitable for use with coal and grain, as well as to relatively soft suspension systems such as may be desirable for more fragile goods, such as rolls of paper, automobiles, shipping containers fruit and vegetables, and white goods.
One determinant of overall ride quality is the dynamic response to lateral perturbations. That is, when there is a lateral perturbation at track level, the rigid steel wheelsets of the truck may be pushed sideways relative to the car body. Lateral perturbations may arise for example from uneven track, or from passing over switches or from turnouts and other track geometry perturbations. When the train is moving at speed, the time duration of the input pulse due to the perturbation may be very short.
The suspension system of the truck reacts to the lateral perturbation. It is generally desirable for the force transmission to be relatively low. High force transmissibility, and corresponding high lateral acceleration, may tend not to be advantageous for the lading. This is particularly so if the lading includes relatively fragile goods. In general, the lateral stiffness of the suspension reflects the combined displacement of (a) the sideframe between (i) the pedestal bearing adapter and (ii) the bottom spring seat (that is, the sideframes swing laterally as a pendulum with the pedestal bearing adapter being the top pivot point for the pendulum); and (b) the lateral deflection of the springs between (i) the lower spring seat in the sideframe and (ii) the upper spring mounting against the underside of the truck bolster, and (c) the moment and the associated transverse shear force between the (i) spring seat in the sideframe and (ii) the upper spring mounting against the underside of the truck bolster.
In a conventional rail road car truck, the lateral stiffness of the spring groups is sometimes estimated as being approximately ½ of the vertical spring stiffness. Thus the choice of vertical spring stiffness may strongly affect the lateral stiffness of the suspension. The vertical stiffness of the spring groups may tend to yield a vertical deflection at the releasable coupler from the light car (i.e., empty) condition to the fully laden condition of about 2 inches. For a conventional grain or coal car subject to a 286,000 lbs., gross weight on rail limit, this may imply a dead sprung load of some 50,000 lbs., and a live sprung load of some 220,000 lbs., yielding a spring stiffness of 25-30,000 lbs./in., per spring group (there being, typically, two groups per truck, and two trucks per car). This may yield a lateral spring stiffness of 13-16,000 lbs./in per spring group. It should be noted that the numerical values given in this background discussion are approximations of ranges of values, and are provided for the purposes of general order-of-magnitude comparison, rather than as values of a specific truck.
The second component of stiffness relates to the lateral deflection of the sideframe itself. In a conventional truck, the weight of the sprung load can be idealized as a point load applied at the center of the bottom spring seat. That load is carried by the sideframe to the pedestal seat mounted on the bearing adapter. The vertical height difference between these two points may be in the range of perhaps 12 to 18 inches, depending on wheel size and sideframe geometry. For the general purposes of this description, for a truck having 36 inch wheels, 15 inches (+/−) might be taken as a roughly representative height.
The pedestal seat may typically have a flat surface that bears on an upwardly crowned surface on the bearing adapter. The crown may typically have a radius of curvature of about 60 inches, with the center of curvature lying below the surface (i.e., the surface is concave downward).
When a lateral shear force is imposed on the springs, there is a reaction force in the bottom spring seat that will tend to deflect the sideframe, somewhat like a pendulum. When the sideframe takes on an angular deflection in one direction, the line of contact of the flat surface of the pedestal seat with the crowned surface of the bearing adapter will tend to move along the arc of the crown in the opposite direction. That is, if the bottom spring seat moves outboard, the line of contact will tend to move inboard. This motion is resisted by a moment couple due to the sprung weight of the car on the bottom spring seat, acting on a moment arm between (a) the line of action of gravity at the spring seat and (b) the line of contact of the crown of the bearing adapter. For a 286,000 lbs. car the apparent stiffness of the sideframe may be of the order of 18,000-25,000 lbs./in, measured at the bottom spring seat. That is, the lateral stiffness of the sideframe (i.e., the pendulum action by itself) can be greater than the (already relatively high) lateral stiffness of the spring group in shear, and this apparent stiffness is proportional to the total sprung weight of the car (including lading). When taken as being analogous to two springs in series, the overall equivalent lateral spring stiffness may be of the order of 8,000 to 10,000 lbs./in., per sideframe. A car designed for lesser weights may have softer apparent stiffness. This level of stiffness may not always yield as smooth a ride as may be desired.
There is another component of spring stiffness due to the unequal compression of the inside and outside portions of the spring group as the bottom spring seat rotates relative to the upper spring group mount under the bolster. This stiffness, which is additive to (that is, in parallel with) the stiffness of the sideframe, can be significant, and may be of the order of 3000-3500 lbs./in per spring group, depending on the stiffness of the springs and the layout of the group. Other second and third order effects are neglected for the purpose of this description. The total lateral stiffness for one sideframe, including the spring stiffness, the pendulum stiffness and the spring moment stiffness, for a S2HD 110 Ton truck may be about 9200 lbs/inch per sideframe.
It has been observed that it may be preferable to have springs of a given vertical stiffness to give certain vertical ride characteristics, and a different characteristic for lateral perturbations. In particular, a softer lateral response may be desired at high speed (greater than about 50 m.p.h.) and relatively low amplitude to address a truck hunting concern, while a different spring characteristic may be desirable to address a low speed (roughly 10-25 m.p.h.) roll characteristic, particularly since the overall suspension system may have a roll mode resonance lying in the low speed regime.
An alternate type of three piece truck is the “swing motion” truck. One example of a swing motion truck is shown at page 716 in the 1980 Car and Locomotive Cyclopedia (1980, Simmons-Boardman, Omaha). This illustration, with captions removed, is the basis of FIGS. 1a, 1b and 1c, herein, labelled “Prior Art”. Since the truck has both lateral and longitudinal axes of symmetry, the artist has only shown half portions of the major components of the truck. The particular example illustrated is a swing motion truck produced by National Castings Inc., more commonly referred to as “NACO”. Another example of a NACO Swing Motion truck is shown at page 726 of the 1997 Car and Locomotive Cyclopedia (1997, Simmons-Boardroom, Omaha). An earlier swing motion three piece truck is shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,670,660 of Weber et al., issued Jun. 20, 1972, the specification of which is incorporated herein by reference.
In a swing motion truck, the sideframe is mounted as a “swing hanger” and acts much like a pendulum. In contrast to the truck described above, the bearing adapter has an upwardly concave rocker bearing surface, having a radius of curvature of perhaps 10 inches and a center of curvature lying above the bearing adapter. A pedestal rocker seat nests in the upwardly concave surface, and has itself an upwardly concave surface that engages the rocker bearing surface. The pedestal rocker seat has a radius of curvature of perhaps 5 inches, again with the center of curvature lying upwardly of the rocker.
In this instance, the rocker seat is in dynamic rolling contact with the surface of the bearing adapter. The upper rocker assembly tends to act more like a hinge than the shallow crown of the bearing adapter described above. As such, the pendulum may tend to have a softer, perhaps much softer, response than the analogous conventional sideframe. Depending on the geometry of the rocker, this may yield a sideframe resistance to lateral deflection in the order of ¼ (or less) to about ½ of what might otherwise be typical. If combined in series with the spring group stiffness, it can be seen that the relative softness of the pendulum may tend to become the dominant factor. To some extent then, the lateral stiffness of the truck becomes less strongly dependent on the chosen vertical stiffness of the spring groups at least for small displacements. Furthermore, by providing a rocking lower spring seat, the swing motion truck may tend to reduce, or eliminate, the component of lateral stiffness that may tend to arise because of unequal compression of the inboard and outboard members of the spring groups, thus further softening the lateral response.
In the truck of U.S. Pat. No. 3,670,660 the rocking of the lower spring seat is limited to a range of about 3 degrees to either side of center, and a transom extends between the sideframes, forming a rigid, unsprung, lateral connecting member between the rocker plates of the two sideframes. In this context, “unsprung” refers to the transom being mounted to a portion of the truck that is not resiliently isolated from the rails by the main spring groups.
When the three degree condition is reached, the rockers “lock-up” against the sideframes, and the dominant lateral displacement characteristic is that of the main spring groups in shear, as illustrated and described by Weber. The lateral, unsprung, sideframe connecting member, namely the transom, has a stop that engages a downwardly extending abutment on the bolster to limit lateral travel of the bolster relative to the sideframes. This use of a lateral connecting member is shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,461,814 of Weber, issued Aug. 19, 1969, also incorporated herein by reference. As noted in U.S. Pat. No. 3,670,660 the use of a spring plank had been known, and the use of an abutment at the level of the spring plank tended to permit the end of travel reaction to the truck bolster to be transmitted from the sideframes at a relatively low height, yielding a lower overturning moment on the wheels than if the end-of-travel force were transmitted through gibs on the truck bolster from the sideframe columns at a relatively greater height. The use of a spring plank in this way was considered advantageous.
In Canadian Patent 2,090,031, (issued Apr. 15, 1997 to Weber et al.,) noting the advent of lighter weight, low deck cars, Weber et al., replaced the transom with a lateral rod assembly to provide a rigid, unsprung connection member between the platforms of the rockers of the lower spring seats. One type of car in which relative lightness and a low main deck has tended to be found is an Autorack car.
For the purposes of rapid estimation of truck lateral stiffness, the following formula can be used:ktruck=2×[(ksideframe)−1+(kspring shear)−1]−1 
where                ksideframe=[kpendulum+kspring moment]        kspring shear=The lateral spring constant for the spring group in shear.        kpendulum=The force required to deflect the pendulum per unit of deflection, as measured at the center of the bottom spring seat.        kspring moment=The force required to deflect the bottom spring seat per unit of sideways deflection against the twisting moment caused by the unequal compression of the inboard and outboard springs.        
In a pure pendulum, the relationship between weight and deflection is approximately linear for small angles of deflection, such that, by analogy to a spring in which F=kx, a lateral constant (for small angles) can be defined as kpendulum=W/L, where k is the lateral constant, W is the weight, and L is the pendulum length. Further, for the purpose of rapid comparison of the lateral swinging of the sideframes, an approximation for an equivalent pendulum length for small angles of deflection can be defined as Leq=W/kpendulum. In this equation W represents the sprung weight borne by that sideframe, typically ¼ of the total sprung weight for a symmetrical car. For a conventional truck, Leq may be of the order of about 3 or 4 inches. For a swing motion truck, Leq may be of the order of about 10 to 15 inches.
It is also possible to define the pendulum lateral stiffness (for small angles) in terms of the length of the pendulum, the radius of curvature of the rocker, and the design weight carried by the pendulum: according to the formula:kpendulum=(Flateral/δlateral)=(W/Lpendulum)[(Rcurvature/Lpendulum)+1]where:                kpendulum=the lateral stiffness of the pendulum        Flateral=the force per unit of lateral deflection        δlateral=a unit of lateral deflection        W=the weight borne by the pendulum        Lpendulum=the length of the pendulum, being the vertical distance from the contact surface of the bearing adapter to the bottom spring seat        Rcurvature=the radius of curvature of the rocker surface        
Following from this, if the pendulum stiffness is taken in series with the lateral spring stiffness, then the resultant overall lateral stiffness can be obtained. Using this number in the denominator, and the design weight in the numerator yields a length, effectively equivalent to a pendulum length if the entire lateral stiffness came from an equivalent pendulum according to Lresultant=W/klateral total 
For a conventional truck with a 60 inch radius of curvature rocker, and stiff suspension, this length, Lresultant may be of the order of 6-8 inches, or thereabout.
So that the present invention may better be understood by comparison, in the prior art illustration of FIGS. 1a, 1b, and 1c, a NACO swing motion truck is identified generally as A20. Inasmuch as the truck is symmetrical about the truck center both from side-to-side and lengthwise, the artist has shown only half of the bolster, identified as A22, and half of one of the sideframes, identified as A24.
In the customary manner, sideframe A24 has defined in it a generally rectangular window A26 that admits one of the ends of the bolster A28. The top boundary of window A26 is defined by the sideframe arch, or compression member identified as top chord member A30, and the bottom of window A26 is defined by a tension member, identified as bottom chord A32. The fore and aft vertical sides of window A26 are defined by sideframe columns A34.
At the swept up ends of sideframe A24 there are sideframe pedestal fittings A38 which each accommodate an upper rocker identified as a pedestal rocker seat A40, that engages the upper surface of a bearing adapter A42. Bearing adapter A42 itself engages a bearing mounted on one of the axles of the truck adjacent one of the wheels. A rocker seat A40 is located in each of the fore and aft pedestals, the rocker seats being longitudinally aligned such that the sideframe can swing transversely relative to the rolling direction of the truck A20 generally in what is referred to as a “swing hanger” arrangement.
The bottom chord of the sideframe includes pockets A44 in which a pair of fore and aft lower rocker bearing seats A46 are mounted. The lower rocker seat A48 has a pair of rounded, tapered ends or trunnions A50 that sit in the lower rocker bearings A48, and a medial platform A52. An array of four corner bosses A54 extend upwardly from platform A52.
An unsprung, lateral, rigid connecting member in the nature of a spring plank, or transom A60 extends cross-wise between the sideframes in a spaced apart, underslung, relationship below truck bolster A22. Transom A60 has an end portion that has an array of four apertures A62 that pick up on bosses A54. A grouping, or set of springs A64 seats on the end of the transom, the corner springs of the set locating above bosses A54.
The spring group, or set A64, is captured between the distal end of bolster A22 and the end portion of transom A60. Spring set A64 is placed under compression by the weight of the rail car body and lading that bears upon bolster A22 from above. In consequence of this loading, the end portion of transom A60, and hence the spring set, are carried by platform A54. The reaction force in the springs has a load path that is carried through the bottom rocker A70 (made up of trunnions A50 and lower rocker bearings A48) and into the sideframe A22 more generally.
Friction damping is provided by damping wedges A72 that seat in mating bolster pockets A74. Bolster pockets A74 have inclined damper seats A76. The vertical sliding faces of the friction damper wedges then ride up an down on friction wear plates A80 mounted to the inwardly facing surfaces of the sideframe columns.
The “swing motion” truck gets its name from the swinging motion of the sideframe on the upper rockers when a lateral track perturbation is imposed on the wheels. The reaction of the sideframes is to swing, rather like pendula, on the upper rockers. When this occurs, the transom and the truck bolster tend to shift sideways, with the bottom spring seat platform rotating on the lower rocker.
The upper rockers are inserts, typically of a hardened material, whose rocking, or engaging, surface A80 has a radius of curvature of about 5 inches, with the center of curvature (when assembled) lying above the upper rockers (i.e., the surface is upwardly concave).
As noted above, one of the features of a swing motion truck is that while it may be quite stiff vertically, and while it may be resistant to parallelogram deformation because of the unsprung lateral connection member, it may at the same time tend to be laterally relatively soft.